A group of local and retired politicians who favor quick passage of climate-change legislation is launching a public dialogue in Colorado and other states this week, warning that climate change may threaten national security.

“A lot of the human suffering in the world today is being precipitated by climate changes,” which have led to droughts and shortages causing “political destabilization that, in some instances, brings down governments,” said former U.S. Sen. John Warner, R-Va. He addressed Air Force Academy cadets Tuesday, and was to join former U.S. Sen. Gary Hart and others in Denver today.

Military forces increasingly will deploy on humanitarian missions to deal with climate-driven calamities, Warner said. Americans also will feel the effects on ice caps, coral reefs and forests, he said. “Our government should be moving ahead on this issue.”

Warner and Hart, joined by Gov. Bill Ritter’s climate-change coordinator, Alice Madden, are to lead a public forum today at 10 a.m. in the University of Colorado Denver’s Tivoli multicultural student lounge. Pew Foundation backers contend climate change, if unchecked, will lead to civil strife, poverty, conflicts over resources such as water, and more terrorism.

“It makes no sense whatsoever to send our men and women to fight oil wars when we haven’t got the political will to make our buildings and homes more energy-efficient,” Madden said.

For U.S. leaders negotiating climate treaties with Europeans and Asians, Congress’ failure to act on climate change “hurts the country very badly. It undermines the political and moral authority of the administration,” said Hart, a CU scholar-in-residence and co-chairman of the Homeland Security Advisory Committee.

Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., has worked on draft legislation that would limit greenhouse-gas emissions and set up a cap-and-trade system for industry to clean up production or pay to offset pollution. He’ll be at an upcoming climate- change summit in Copenhagen.

“There’s an outside chance we could have a full Senate bill passed,” which “would be ideal,” Udall said. The summit “will give us an opportunity to re-assert our leadership.”

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., who also may attend the summit, said “we spent the last eight years losing credibility and clout in the international community. . . . It would be nice to have passed a full bill” before the summit.

But Colorado State University meteorologist William Gray, once a high school classmate of Warner’s, challenged his assertion that climate- induced calamities will require military action.

Compared with “terrorism, fighting crime . . . this is something we shouldn’t be so much concerned with,” said Gray, who contends ocean circulation — not human activity — drives climate patterns. “At least, we should put it off for another generation or two and revisit it then.”

Bruce Finley covers environment issues, the land air and water struggles shaping Colorado and the West. Finley grew up in Colorado, graduated from Stanford, then earned masters degrees in international relations as a Fulbright scholar in Britain and in journalism at Northwestern. He is also a lawyer and previously handled international news with on-site reporting in 40 countries.

Using data from the Dartmouth Atlas – a source of information and analytics that organizes Medicare data by a variety of indicators linked to medical resource use – we recently ranked geographic areas based on markers of end-of-life care quality, including deaths in the hospital and number of physicians seen in the last year of life.

Wednesday morning two independent research teams, one based in the Netherlands and the other in California, reported that the deluge from Hurricane Harvey was significantly heavier than it would have been before the era of human-caused global warming.

Denver’s newest skyscraper will be home to one of the city’s most recognizable home-grown business by the end of next year. Chipotle is moving its 450 downtown corporate staff into the 1144 Fifteenth tower by the end of 2018.